Last night, Brixmor Property Group Inc., a shopping-center REIT, priced 41.25 million shares in its initial public offering at $20, raising about $825 million for owners Blackstone Group LP and marking the biggest IPO of a shopping-center company in a generation.

The last time a retail real-estate firm this big went public was 1993, when Simon Property Group Inc., the country’s largest mall owner, raised $840 million. Brixmor’s offering could still top Simon’s in size by selling over the next month 6.2 million shares that still remain in a “Greenshoe” offering reserved for the IPO’s underwriters.

Investors are watching the Brixmor deal closely because it’s the first in a series of IPOs that private-equity giant Blackstone has teed up over the next year or two. Blackstone cobbled Brixmor (the name means “bricks and mortar”) together from assets it bought from troubled Australian shopping-center company Centro Properties Group and several other smaller portfolios. Blackstone has held onto 72.3% of the company. Read More »